The present invention pertains generally to communications services and, more particularly, to a system for reconciling differences in database information among service providers maintaining separate databases.
Interexchange carriers who provide long-distance service to customers frequently place access service requests with local exchange carriers to arrange for voice and data connections to fulfill customer needs. An interexchange carrier may have to deal with a number of different local exchange carriers who provide the local services for such customers. Typically, a local exchange carrier (LEC) will make certain services available to business customers within the LEC""s service area. For example, a LEC may provide a certain number of T1, T3, OC-48, etc. services that are provided between the customer and the LEC central office.
The business customer may wish to either activate or deactivate voice and data services as business needs either increase or decrease. For example, if a business customer desires to increase its service, a representative of the business customer will normally contact its interexchange carrier by phone and make a request for the additional service. The provisioner is the person at the interexchange carrier who takes the order from the business customer. The provisioner then processes the request on a prevalidation system. The prevalidation system allows the interexchange carrier to access the database of the applicable LEC to determine the availability of channels for the requested service. In other words, the prevalidation system obtains the circuit identification for the specific channels that are to be provided by the LEC to fulfill the particular service order.
After the provisioner performs a prevalidation request to determine availability of LEC resources, the submits an access service request (ASR) to the LEC using a separate ordering system. An access service request (ASR) is a formal request for the LEC to commit specific resources to fulfill a customer""s service request.
The provisioner submits the formal ASR by keyboarding all of the detailed information regarding circuit ID""s, service locations, service requests and other detailed information into an ASR ordering system. In accordance with the prior art, the ASR ordering system is separate from the prevalidation system used by the provisioner. In the process of re-entering data from the prevalidation system to complete an ASR, errors may be easily made by the provisioner. Further, other provisioners of the interexchange carrier may have also received requests from other representatives of the same business customer at approximately the same time which could result in the duplicate assignment of the same circuit IDs. This practice of separately performing prevalidation and re-keying of data into an automatic service request system are problematic for the interexchange carrier due to the time delay in placing the order and due to the costs and delays associated with the necessity to generate supplemental orders whenever the LEC rejects the service request.
A great deal of effort must be expended in tediously entering the detailed and extensive information of an access service request. Very often, the provisioners become very busy and are unable to prepare the service request immediately after it is requested by the business customer. Further, the inherent delays in placing an incorrect order, having that order rejected, and preparing a supplemental order can be costly to the interexchange carrier. Such a process of submitting a supplemental order may result in several days of delay, causing loss of revenue and customer dissatisfaction. Additionally, it costs the interexchange carrier time and money for the provisioner to prepare and submit the supplemental order.
Although the prevalidation process alone has reduced costly supplemental orders necessitated by errors, it would be advantageous to provide a system that facilitates service orders and even further reduces errors that can occur during the actual ordering process.
The present invention overcomes the disadvantages and limitations of the prior art by generally providing a system for integrating prevalidation with service ordering to facilitate accurate preparation of service requests. In accordance with preferred embodiment, the present invention provides for an interexchange carrier to independently maintain records of available LEC resources. Although these records are maintained separately from the LEC, the records are maintained based upon the LEC""s responses to prevalidation requests.
The present invention may therefore comprise a method of reconciling an interexchange carrier database with a local exchange carrier database, the method comprising: with the interexchange carrier database, locating circuit identification for circuits associated with a particular local exchange carrier that maintains the local exchange carrier database information; generating a batch file containing the circuit identification information for the particular local exchange carrier; generating prevalidation requests using the batch file to obtain status information from the local exchange carrier database pertaining to the circuits associated with the particular local exchange carrier; comparing the status information with data stored in the interexchange carrier database; reconciling differences between the status information and the data stored in the interexchange carrier database.
The present invention may further comprise a system for reconciling circuit assignment information stored by an interexchange carrier with circuit assignment information stored by a local exchange carrier comprising: an interexchange carrier database that stores the circuit assignment information; a prevalidation system that accesses the interexchange carrier database, generates a batch file of said circuit assignment information of the interexchange carrier, generates prevalidation requests to obtain corresponding circuit assignment information of the local exchange carrier, compares the circuit assignment information of the local exchange carrier with the circuit assignment information of the interexchange carrier and generates a report indicating differences in the circuit assignment information.
The advantages of the present system are that prevalidation requests can be made automatically as part of an ordering system since the prevalidation ordering system and the ordering system are integrated into a single system that utilizes at least a portion of the same data. In this fashion, the need to reenter data into the ordering system that has already been entered into the prevalidation system is eliminated. Errors that can potentially occur upon reentering data are avoided. Further, delays and costs associated with preparation and submittal of supplemental orders can be substantially eliminated.